It began as soon as I became pregnant, the worrying. I worried if the baby would be okay, if he/she would have all their fingers and toes, if the heart was forming right and would the delivery go well. Once I gave birth, many other things happened that couldn’t be reversed. First, I fell head over heels in love with this tiny being, my body changed in ways I never thought possible and my heart began to worry over every little thing and didn’t stop. I have found that being a mother has been one of the greatest rewards in my life and a role that has given me the most joy. It also has created endless worry.
Before I had children I never imagined that I would ever become a prisoner of worry. I thought I would raise a family, be the perfect mother, have the perfect children, watch them grow into perfect adults and scoot them along into their own lives. Wrong! Little did I know that from the moment they were born fear would grip me. I would begin to worry over real and imagined things. Things such as were they getting enough to eat to were they eating the right things. I wondered if they were too hot, too cold, could they fall out of bed and harm themselves, what kind of germs surrounded them and should we take a trip to the grocery store if one had the sniffles.
All kinds of worries started nagging me with the first child; others came along with the second child. Did she feel I loved her the same, enough, was I giving them both the attention they needed? On and on it went. I did learn to relax a little; I didn’t jump quite so much with the cries as I learned to discern which were the calls for attention and the ones for help. Still the worries stayed on and grew as the children grew. More children came along and with them new worries evolved, never enough time to devote to each child, not enough money, too many illnesses, juggles of a large family, my list of worries grew larger and larger.
Worry changed form; it became a dark monster as the children turned from toddlers to school age to teens. Let me tell you the teen age worry monster is one of the worst, the ugliest, and scariest of all the worries. Those dark days haunted me as I became the mother who had thought her sleepless nights of having a newborn were over, began again as soon as they turned into a teen. I sat by the phone or window now instead of by a crib or in a rocking chair. Now instead of holding my child to my chest and soothing them, I longed for someone to sooth my worry.
Many times, long past curfews, long before cell phones, I sat waiting, often pacing, always praying for their safe return, alternating between prayers and anger. I waited for the sound of car door slamming to announce the return home from a date, party or football game, safe and sound. It would be then I would realize I could breathe, let go of the air that had built up in my lungs as if holding it would mean they were alright.
Being a Mother meant that part of my job was to become a protector and I was fierce at it. I would allow no one to harm my children and was quick to take them out of harm’s way. What I found out, was that once the children were past the toddler stage, past the grade school age and sought independence they would not always be within my sight to protect. I had to rely on faith, faith that somehow I had given them enough to get them through the outside world to survive.
Part of being a mother is learning to let go and that is also the hardest most gut wrenching part of being a mother. I once watched a mother bird kick her baby out of a nest to fly, her wings fluttered just a moment as if she wanted to go after the baby, but she waited, she watched. The little bird at first fell, fluttered its wings, dropped to the point even I wanted to run beneath it to catch it and then suddenly, the little thing just caught on and flew. I watched as the wings caught the wind and soared back up into the nest next to mommy and chirped loudly. Each day the little bird ventured further and further away until one day it was gone.
I must trust in this that I can raise my children to do the same, to fly upon their own. They will flutter, they might even fall, but I have faith each will soar high, even higher than I could ever imagine. This however, does not mean my worry ends, I am sure of this very thing. For I will invent new worries, I am good at that. I once asked my father when do you stop worrying about your kids.
He looked over at me, his eyes crinkling up into a smile I knew so well. “How old are you?” he asked.
“I am fifty Dad.”
He chuckled softly, turning back to looking over the golden field in his back yard watching the sun dip low in the sky.
“I’ll let you know.”
Teresa Gale
August 9, 2009
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